Lately, it was becoming clear that the ruthless tactics of the Wall Street banking fraternity and several of the biggest American corporations had so incensed the Australian Government that it was actively considering trade sanctions across the board — as opposed to the limited measures already in place — including sanctions against the United States and the nationalisation, without compensation, of ‘assets illegally seized’ by American companies from both Australian and other Commonwealth former owners.
The real problem was that the ‘peace dividend’ fiasco was just the latest, most public symptom of the creeping malaise at the heart of the Union. Yes, the bombed cities had been deluged with federal support — not very well co-ordinated, planned or effective support admittedly — and powers had been devolved to selected State Governors to keep the peace but, and it was a big but, the Administration’s response to the aftermath of the October War had been essentially piecemeal, reactive, somewhat in the manner of a concussed boxer swinging his arms in a futile attempt to defend himself from further punishment twenty seconds after the fight ought to have been stopped.
In the last year there had been no real leadership from the White House. The President could have spent most of the last year hiding in a bunker for all the good he had done. From the evidence of the Vice-President’s regular perambulations around the country an apolitical observer might easily have gained the impression that Lyndon Baines Johnson was the President. Insiders knew this was not the case; LBJ had always been outside the walls of Camelot but in JFK’s continuing absence all across America people were making up their own minds what it meant. This time next year there were supposed to be Presidential elections; nobody even knew if Jack Kennedy was going to run for a second term!
None of which made a heap of difference to Pat Brown’s domestic political woes, or to the ongoing Federal funding freeze on all major State initiated infrastructure projects like the bridging of San Diego Bay.
In comparison with the Germans, the French, the British and the Japanese, the United States of America ought to have been celebrating its blessings. The latest estimates spoke of populations in Germany and Austria reduced by 85 %, in France and the Low Countries reduced by over 50 %, in the United Kingdom reduced by around 25 %, and in Japan there had been a reduction of at least 20 % in comparison to pre-war levels. In North America the Department of the Interior estimated a total casualty — rather than mortality — rate ‘including dead, seriously injured and lightly injured’ attributable to the war of 5.3 %, of whom 2.78 % had probably died during the war.
America’s principle European allies had been devastated; whereas of the fifty states in the Union forty-one had suffered no nuclear strike or near miss, and of those forty-one, only Montana, Wisconsin and Connecticut had experienced, albeit briefly, dangerously high levels of radioactive fallout which had locked down the citizenry in some areas for a period of between one and three weeks after the war. Given the economic might and the continental resources of the Union it ought not to have been beyond the wit of the men in Washington to ensure that, one; massive and urgent assistance was delivered to the areas hardest hit, and two; that reconstruction and regeneration ought to have become the great engine of national revival. Unfortunately, neither had happened. Instead, for want of leadership the country had retreated into mourning, and an increasingly disconnected elite in Washington DC had turned to quick fixes, snake oil economics, and the politics of pork-belly isolationism. America First was a slogan, not a policy.
California had suffered neither a direct strike, nor significant fallout issues and yet over a year after the war cities like San Diego, heavily reliant on the military dollar, were as a direct result of the Federal Government policy, in steep recession at exactly the same time the Administration in Washington was demanding the State take in a still higher quota of displaced persons from the ‘National Refugee Register’.
No matter how cock-eyed the perspective from the White House, West Coast observers had already drawn their conclusions about the state of the Union and very few of those conclusions boded well for the continuing health and sustenance of that Union.
It was undeniable that the war had been terrible; however, it had not been a crushing or in any way complete national catastrophe. Historians and academics were already drawing rough and ready analogies with experience of the Civil War, in which an approximately similar proportion of the population had perished — albeit over the course of four years and not six or seven hours — and in which the economy of some parts of the country had been effectively extinguished.
Academics liked to point out that in the wake of the Civil War the Union had prospered, economic growth had roared ahead like a steam train going downhill with the brake off. The argument ran something like: in adversity there was also a tranche of new opportunities; despite the October War America remained great and would, inevitably, be greater in the years to come. Once, that was, the foundations had been built for the recovery.
After the night of the October War there should have been a great coming together of the American nation, and there might have been had the Administration put its shoulder to the wheel and appealed to the greatness of the American spirit. Just after the war there had been an upwelling of compassion and millions, perhaps billions of dollars pledged for the relief of the devastated cities and regions. And then the unity had begun to ebb away as the realisation dawned that help from the Federal Government was not going to be immediate, nor necessarily massive, and even when it arrived it was going to be hedged around with Byzantine caveats and provisos as to who might and might not be permitted to bid, procure, manage and account for whatever largesse was eventually doled out not by the Administration, but by a Congress which had already sunk its claws into the ‘relief funds’ like the rusty teeth of a bear trap into an unwary Grizzly’s hind left leg. The situation called for a George Washington, or a Thomas Jefferson, or a Roosevelt — Teddy or FDR would have known what to do — but all they had had was Jack Kennedy in mourning, Richard Nixon heckling from the sidelines, and old soldiers like Dwight Eisenhower grumbling to his friends that ‘somebody needs to get a grip’. Inevitably, State Governors and big city Mayors had started making up the rules as they went along.
“Has the President started talking yet?” Pat Brown asked as his entourage swept out of the cool fall morning sunshine into the dark, somewhat dilapidated lobby of the magnificent old Hotel del Coronado. Larry Lawrence had bought the Hotel del Coronado planning to knock it down and to build condominiums on the land around it. He had gambled and lost; real estate prices had continued to tumble when everybody said they ought to be on the rise and rise. Now he badly needed backers if he was going to stay in the hotel business; the sort of backers whose doors could only be opened this side of Hell freezing over by the enthusiastic high profile endorsements of people like the Governor of America’s most populous state.